


even the stars can be hollow

by polarkai



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Bipolar Alex Danvers, Bipolar Disorder, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mania, Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:07:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21748774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polarkai/pseuds/polarkai
Summary: The thing about mental illness is that there’s no set instruction manual on how to handle it, no formulas or maps to lead one out of its clutches. Alex thinks that if she just had a set ofguidelines,then maybe dealing with this would be easier than it is.
Relationships: Alex Danvers & Eliza Danvers, Alex Danvers & Kara Danvers, Alex Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 12
Kudos: 137





	even the stars can be hollow

**Author's Note:**

> so chyler leigh revealed that she struggles with bipolar disorder, and as someone who was also diagnosed was being bipolar, i decided i wanted to write a fic with alex danvers struggling with it. much of what i'll be writing here, although mixed with canon of course, come from my own experiences as well as what chyler herself said she experiences.  
> this fic will also be focusing more on mania at first, mostly just because that's what i've experienced more recently and because i think many people fail to recognize that mania is not always the "fun" part of bipolar disorder. it isn't just feeling great all the time and having fun. mania has its own challenges.  
> oops, i just rambled. anyways!

these pills make me feel fine, but i'm not okay

— _nobody,_ gothurted.

* * *

Alex is a day old, and she has her father’s eyes. 

It is the first and only thing they hope she has in common with him. 

* * *

Alex is seven years old, and she can’t understand why her parents are fighting. 

She has her ear pressed against the wood of her bedroom door, listening to them argue, so loud that their voices carry upstairs from the living room. Her hands are shaking as she hears her father yelling, glass shattering, and her mother crying. 

“We can’t keep doing this, Jeremiah!” her mom screams, and there’s another loud crash that makes Alex flinch even from rooms away. “You’re meant to be supporting us, not spending all our savings on things we cannot afford. You’re out of control again! How can you not see it?”

As soon as her dad shouts back, his voice hoarse and scary, Alex nearly recoils away from the door. He’s never screamed at her like that, but he and Mom have these kinds of fights constantly, and she just wants it to stop. 

“Then why don’t you just kick me out, Eliza?” he snaps, a loud bang on the table. “Huh?” 

Her mother gets so quiet that Alex has to strain to hear her now, “You know I can’t do that. Not with Alex.” 

There are heavy steps coming up the stairs, and Alex scrambles away from the door as she hears another door, the one to her parent’s bedroom, slam shut. It’s so hard that it makes the picture frames on the wall shake, and she curls up under the covers as softer steps come up the stairs next, her door creaking open slowly.

“Alexandra.” It’s her mother, peeking inside the room, her eyes sad. “Sweetie.” 

Alex pokes her head out of the blankets. “Is Dad okay?” 

Her mom’s lips curl inwards, eyebrows scrunched together. She steps inside the room and closes the door before coming to sit on the edge of the bed, which lets Alex know that they’re about to have one of their long “talks,” the ones they often have after nights like this. 

And Alex isn’t dumb. She reads big books, thick books like Harry Potter that her classmates can’t even read themselves yet, and she gets all A’s in her classes, especially science. She’s not dumb, so she knows the look on her mom’s face is not a good one.

“Alex, your father isn't doing well lately.” 

Alex shifts in bed. “Is he sick?” 

Her mom glances at her. Her hands are clasped in her lap, and if Alex listens hard enough, she thinks she can hear her father in his room, pacing. “In a way, yes, he is,” her mom finally says, nodding solemnly. “But this kind of sick doesn’t get better with some rest and cough medicine. Your father is bipolar, Alex. He gets like this sometimes, where he can’t control himself.” 

Alex isn’t dumb. 

But it’s not her dad that her mom is worried about, she can tell. 

The next morning, it’s just her and her mom at the breakfast table, and they eat their food silently. Her dad doesn’t leave the room for two days. Alex misses him. 

* * *

Alex is fourteen years old, and she has a new sister and no dad. 

It’s been a few months since his death, and she helps her mother pack of his things into big cardboard boxes before carrying them up into the attic. They don’t speak as she hands her mom the packing tape and watches her shove his belongings away. 

When she looks at Alex, there is a kind of sadness there that Alex doesn’t miss. It’s a deep sorrow in her eyes, like she’s just waiting for something bad to happen.

They don’t talk about it. Eliza makes her swear to protect Kara, and so that’s what Alex does, throwing herself into taking care of her new sister for the rest of her high school career. They don’t talk about Jeremiah, and the look in her mom’s eyes never go away, even as the years fly by and she gets accepted into _Stanford_ to complete her PhD/M.D, of all things.

Like her mother is just waiting for her to fail. And maybe she’s right after all, because it doesn’t take long for Alex to get on academic probation and lose her full-ride scholarship. 

Whatever. She’s twenty four years old now, and she can have fun. She’s meant to be having fun in college.

She’s twenty four years old, and her arms are on fire. 

Not literally. They feel like they are, though, and the adrenaline is pumping so quickly through her veins that she feels like she could lift the whole world on her shoulders, like Atlas. There is music sending vibrations through her feet and up her body as she dances, arms held high, hips swaying as her surroundings swirl around her. 

“Hey,” a gruff voice calls out from above her, and suddenly there are two large hands on her hips, too rough. Despite herself, she wraps her arms around his neck, letting his leg slot in between hers. 

“Come on,” she calls to him after a few minutes of dancing, grabbing onto his wrist and pulling him away from the dance floor, into a dark, dingy bathroom. 

She should ask if he has a condom. Or, at the very least, ask him to wash his hands first, but she doesn’t, forgoing protection for the delicious thrill of being reckless. Forcing herself to enjoy the way his big, harsh hands holds onto her hips, the way he kisses her, too rough and too eager. 

“You like this?” he asks her, pulling too hard on her hair, teeth scraping against her neck. 

_No, not at all,_ Alex wants to say, but she pushes the disgust down and nods, pretends to enjoy it, pretends to come when he does. Too drunk to complain, or even to care, at this point, even if the sex is bad. Still, it’s an almost animalistic-like need that she can’t seem to control, this urge to just _fuck._ To act wild. 

By the time she stumbles out of the nightclub at three in the morning with her keys in hand, she’s drunker than she expected, the ground rocking and tilting beneath her feet. 

She doesn’t register the cop car sitting next to her own until it’s too late.

She can almost hear her mother’s voice in her head, disappointed and scolding her, but she ignores it, because she feels _good._ Even with the handcuffs tight around her wrists, the metal digging into her skin, she feels as high as she can get, giggling like the stupid, drunk college girls she normally makes fun of herself.

“I’m so disappointed in you, Alexandra,” Eliza tells her over the phone when Alex arrives at the jail. She wants to hang up, regrets using her one phone call to call her mother immediately. She should’ve called Kara, or maybe even one of her friends from Stanford. 

“Mom, I’m twenty four,” Alex rolls her eyes. Even now, the high hasn’t dissipated, and she bounces her leg restlessly as she sits in the jail cell. “These things are supposed to happen at this age, right?” 

It’s a petty excuse, one they both know, but her mother says nothing for a minute. Alex frowns, pulls the phone away from her ear to check if her mom is still there, but she is. 

Then, “Promise me you won’t end up like your father, Alex.” 

She doesn’t fully understand what that means. “Mom, I’m not—” 

“Just, _please_ , Alex,” her mom cuts her off, pleading with her. The tone in her voice instantly kills any high that she was previously feeling, replacing it instead with something like guilt, if only for a moment. 

“Okay,” Alex swears, and the sigh of relief Eliza lets out over the phone is almost palpable. “I won’t end up like Dad.” 

* * *

Alex is twenty seven years old, a trusted DEO agent, and she breaks her promise without even knowing it.

It’s Thanksgiving and she’s already downed four glasses of wine before dinner has even started, and  _ God _ , if Winn doesn’t stop talking soon she’s pretty sure her fifth glass is going to end up in his lap. It’s like all her senses are heightened, heart pounding with the anxiety of what she’s about to do, and she can barely even hear herself speak up from the blood roaring in her ears. 

She does feel the words escape her mouth in a rush, though, spilling from her lips as her mother’s eyes grow wider and wider with each hurried confession. 

_ I’m not a doctor. I work for an organization called the DEO.  _

“How could you  _ do _ this, Alexandra?” her mother asks, shock and disappointment heavy in her tone. Alex wants to take the wine bottle and smash it against the table. “You’ve always been too impulsive for your own good! What did you expect to think about this?” 

Alex recoils slightly. “Impulsive? I’m protecting  _ Kara— _ ”

But Eliza doesn’t let her finish. “What would your father think?” 

“I can never win with you, can I?” she snaps. She can feel Winn and Kara’s eyes on her as she pushes her chair back and storms out, the door slamming shut behind her. 

She flinches. The vague memories of hearing her father do the same thing after a fight with her mom pushes its way to the front of her mind, but she immediately shoves it back even harder as she takes the elevator down, her hands shaking. 

She goes to the bar, after that. Eliza’s words echo in her mind with each shot she downs, hand clutching at the sticky bar top, eyes staring unfocused at the football game playing on TV on the wall. 

_ What would your father think?  _

She likes to think he’d be proud of her, but part of her knows that’s not true. Despite his rocky relationship with her mother, she and her dad had always been close. Close enough that he would never want her to voluntarily thrust herself into situations that would put her in danger.

She glances down at her phone. It’s been hours since she left, and there are three missed calls from Eliza and two from Kara, all of which she’s ignored while she’s been here. She’s blissfully drunk, she knows that much as soon as she stands up and the world tilts beneath her.

Stumbling outside without falling right on her ass takes some work at first, but she’s been drunk enough times by now to ultimately get the hang of this whole walking thing before she waves down a taxi and gives them Kara’s address.

The whole apartment is dark, but Eliza is still sitting on the couch in the living room when Alex walks in, dropping her purse and taking a few steps into the room. 

“I shouldn’t have said that about your dad,” is the first thing her mother says to her when she gets close enough. “It wasn’t fair of me. You always make the hard decisions.” 

Alex hates that she feels tears coming, sliding down her cheeks. “So why hasn’t that ever been  _ enough?” _ she asks, choking on the last word.

Eliza looks down, and there’s a look on her face that Alex can’t help but feel anxious about, wringing her hands. “Your father was so ill, and I suppose I… spent so much time worrying that you’d end up the same way. I was so scared of losing my daughter like I lost my husband.” 

Alex chews at her bottom lip, her shoulders shaking. “So you think I’m—”

“I think that it’s possible, yes.” Her mother nods, and Alex feels the air rush out of her all at once. “That’s why I reacted the way I did earlier, when you told me about the  DEO.”

Alex’s mind is still miles behind, struggling to catch up. There is a heavy sense of dread that’s settled in her stomach like a rock, and she can’t seem to process what her mom is saying. But things only get clearer, after that. Everything comes into sharper focus, and Alex doesn’t quite know what to do with the information she’s given but to pretend like it isn't happening.

* * *

The downward spiral starts the way all things on the path to self-destruction do — slowly, then all at once. 

It’s so deceptive in the long stretches of peace and normalcy between each cycle that it’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment of unraveling, the moment it all goes to shit. Alex, already well-acquainted with self destruction by the time she’d been accepted into Stanford, almost aches to take three steps back to the point of disentanglement if only to yank the remaining, fraying threads from the spool herself.

Alex is twenty nine years old, and she is staring at the bottle of pills in her hand.

She doesn’t want to take them. She shouldn’t _need_ to take them. She is twenty nine years old, in charge of a government organization, and she shouldn’t need to take pills just to feel okay.

“Alex, it isn’t so bad,” Kara tells her over the phone. “Lots of people take medication. Even your mom does!” 

But Alex just sighs. “But I shouldn’t have to,” she argues. 

There’s silence on the other end. For a few moments, all Alex can hear is the sound of Kara’s breathing through the speaker, before her sister speaks up again, quiet and somewhat hesitant. “But— don’t you?” 

The thing is, Kara isn’t exactly in the wrong. Thinking back on the last few years, especially her early twenties, it's hard _not_ to see it. Despite this, sitting in front of the DEO-issued therapist a few hours before, she can’t stop bouncing her leg as she receives the diagnosis. 

“I want to see you here again next week,” the therapist tells her, scribbling in her notebook and gazing up at Alex through thick-rimmed glasses. “I’m writing you a prescription, however the medication won’t alleviate all your symptoms—“

_No,_ Alex hears herself say, seeming a lot farther away all of a sudden. _No, I can’t deal with this right now. You don’t understand._

_“_ This is your best option, Director Danvers,” the therapist continues. “Everyone here is well aware that this is a difficult job, and dealing with mental health issues like this makes it even more difficult. But I’m here to _help_ you deal with this.” She rips the prescription out of her notebook and hands it over. 

Even though it is just a thin piece of paper, it feels heavy in Alex’s hands.

“It’s bullshit,” she insists now, while on the phone with Kara. “I don’t need them.” 

“Well, your therapist seems to think you do!” Kara argues back, blatantly ignoring Alex’s attempts at protesting. “Please, just promise me you’ll take them? At least for now?” 

“Okay,” Alex says. “Okay, Kara, I promise.” 

Kara hangs up a few minutes after that. The pills remain unopened on her nightstand.

* * *

Her hands are shaking. 

_That’s a problem,_ she thinks vaguely.

The locker door slams shut and she fumbles with the buckle on her tactical belt. It’s only when she’s almost out the door that she realizes that her thigh holster is empty, and turns back to retrieve her gun. 

_Forgetful, that’s a problem, too,_ and the gun is secured in its holster as she leaves the locker room. 

The corridors seem almost vacant. It’s too quiet as she walks through the halls, nodding to the occasional agent that passes her by, and she finds herself looking through her phone as she heads to the command center.

**[9:37 AM] Lena:** _Are you at the DEO?_

**[9:38 AM] Lena:** _Stopped by your apartment, Kara said you went into work on your day off again._

**[9:40 AM] Lena:** _You remember we had plans for breakfast, right?_

Alex thumbs through the incoming flow of texts with a frown. There’s an increased tone of worry with each message Lena sends, she can practically feel it through the phone, but Alex slips it back into her pocket without replying to them. 

“Agent Dox,” she calls out as she steps into the command center, eyes glancing around. A stark contrast to how it’s been the past few weeks, there is a startling sense of _calm_ among the DEO this morning. No screeching alarms and red flashing lights, no alien escapee threatening the lives of her agents, no literal almost-apocalypse occurring outside. 

Nothing. 

For some reason, it sets her on edge. 

“Tell me there’s _something_ happening,” she insists, almost _pleads_ with him. There’s an itch under her skin that’s begging to be scratched, the unbearable urge to do something. It’s why she came into work on her day off in the first place, too energetic to simply sit around her apartment and do nothing. 

“I’m afraid not, Director,” he answers, spinning towards her in his seat. “It’s a slow day. I, for one, am glad there is no emergency, as Nia and I are meeting for lunch today. May I suggest that you can take this rare and valuable break to spend some time with Miss Luthor?” 

But Alex isn’t listening to him anymore, waving off what he says as she turns away. “Yeah, yeah,” she mutters distractedly, crossing her arms.

God, she needs to _do_ something. She’s practically vibrating with energy, feeling super-charged, like someone had injected caffeine straight into her veins. 

“Director Danvers?” It’s Brainy again, looking up at her with his eyebrows scrunched in concern. “Are you alright?” 

“What?” she turns towards him, hands moving to her hips. “Yes, Brainy, of course. Why?” 

“Well, it’s just that you seem…” He hesitates a bit, fingers rubbing together as he seems to gather the courage to spit it out, “ _…eager_.” 

Her phone buzzes again in her pocket, probably Lena asking what she’s doing at work again, or maybe even Kara, texting her to find out how she could skip out on sticky buns with Lena to go into work instead. Either way, she ignores it, feeling defensive at Brainy’s tone. 

“I’m not- _eager_ ,” she scoffs, hands dropping from her hips. Even now, with nothing to do, she can’t seem to stand still. “I’m just… ready for work.” 

“But it’s your day off—” 

“Don’t you have things to do, Agent Dox?” she cuts him off, Brainy’s next words seeming to jump right back into his mouth before they can leave it. When he spins around, she vaguely hears him muttering something under his breath, but there’s a roaring in her ears that prevents her from hearing what it is. 

Part of her knows what’s happening, knows what it means that she’s only gotten two hours of sleep but feels like she could stay awake for days, but she doesn’t want to acknowledge it. 

Acknowledging it would only bring the reality of what’s happening to the surface even more. 

There is an orange pill bottle sitting in her drawer for occasions just like this, but she pushes that thought to the back of her mind as she stalks through the corridors of the DEO. She doesn’t need them, not right now, not yet. 

She’s fine. A lack of sleep means nothing. A little eagerness means nothing. This is what she signed up for, after all, being the director of the DEO — there’s bound to be sleepless nights and the need to do something even when things are slow.

Her phone buzzes again, and she finally pulls it out to check it once she’s locked inside her office, plopping down into her seat and tapping her foot against the floor. There is a pile of paperwork that she could be filling out right now, but as soon as she opens the texts, she knows that’s not going to happen.

**[9:54 AM] Kara:** _Lena told me not to warn you but she’s on her way over to the DEO right now._

Then another, sent a few seconds later,

**[9:54 AM] Kara:** _You should never skip breakfast with Lena, Alex!_

Alex lurches forward, her forehead hitting her desk as she groans. Great. 

* * *

The knocks come like the beating of a war drum; steady, loud, and insistent. 

Her temples pound right on time with them. She’s attempting to do the paperwork scattered in front of her, pen in her hand, scrawling her signature on each document before adding them to the growing pile on the edge of her desk.

The door creaks open a second later, with Lena peeking her head in. She takes one look at Alex working and frowns, green eyes critical as she steps inside, shutting the door behind her. There is a tray with two cups inside it, and Lena sets one in front of her. 

“Coffee,” she says, pushing it towards her. 

And Alex wants to say ‘ _I don’t need coffee, I’m not tired and I need to get this work done,’_ but Lena doesn’t give her a chance before she’s interrogating her, arms folded across her chest and eyebrows arched in question.

“Alex, what are you doing?” 

“Working,” Alex says — or snaps, more like, without looking up. If she doesn’t get this done now, she never will.

Her hands are shaking. 

“On your day off?” Lena questions, but her words seem to come from miles away. Alex ignores her, scrawling her signature on another form and adding it to the pile. Then another, and another, until—

“Alex, are you—”

“I’m fine!” she nearly shouts, her voice rough, teeth gritted. Irritation floods through her veins at Lena’s questions, and the pounding in her temple thumps faster. “Just— what do you need?” 

Lena blinks, taken aback but remaining stoic. “We had plans for breakfast,” she says, stiffly now that Alex has snapped at her not once, but twice. It’s only then that Alex notices the brown paper bag in her other hand. “I figured if you were going to work today, I might as well bring it to you.” 

Alex leans back in her chair. “I’m not hungry.” 

Lena only rolls her eyes at that. “You’re a Danvers,” she scoffs, “You’re _always_ hungry. Now eat before I make you.”

It’s not an empty threat, even Alex knows that much, so she gives in and reaches for the bag. There are two sticky buns inside, and looking at them makes her stomach turn. She really _isn’t_ hungry, despite not having yet eaten since she woke up, but she does so for Lena, pulling one out and taking a bite. 

It makes her feel sick, but she pushes through and takes another one.

This thing with Lena is still kind of new, just a few months old. With her mind wiped, she and Lena had grown closer over the few weeks they’d worked together. Not necessarily a friendship, but Alex knew it was more than just an acquaintanceship when Lena entered the lab one day with a cup of coffee. 

“Black, two sugars,” she’d said without having to think about it, and Alex had nearly choked on air, because when exactly did Lena Luthor memorize her coffee order? 

When it finally happened, it was the work of mere seconds. In the time it took to breathe three breaths, Lena shifted from the prideful CEO of L-Corp and distant best friend of Kara to something else— something _more_. Something incandescent and beautiful, something that breaks down Alex’s carefully constructed walls as though they were less than cobwebs. 

But they aren’t together, at least not yet. Alex is still trying to figure _that_ specific part out. 

“I spoke to Kara,” Lena says abruptly, after a brief moment of silence, and her tone makes Alex’s head snap up. “She told me.”

Alex’s shoulders tense. She purses her lips, tries to fight off her first instinct to curse Kara for telling Lena, then realizing that either way, Lena would find out anyways. “I’m fine,” she says, already guessing what Lena’s going to ask next.

She rubs her temples and pulls the cup of coffee towards her. 

The thing about mental illness is that there’s no instruction manual on how to handle it, no formulas or maps to lead one out of its clutches. Alex thinks that if she just had a set of _guidelines_ , then maybe dealing with this would be easier than it is. 

“I feel fine. A little antsy, maybe, but fine,” she insists, because it’s _true._ If anything, the only problem is that there isn’t enough for her to do at the moment, because she feels like she’s going to explode with the way her thoughts are racing. 

Lena doesn’t seem convinced, but she knows Alex well enough to not press her on the matter, simply taking a sip of her own coffee. “Right,” she says, circling the rim of the lid with her finger. “Well, you know I’m here for you, of course.” 

Warmth bursts in Alex’s chest at the statement. “Yes,” she affirms, before taking another bite of her food.

* * *

It’s three in the morning.

Alex knows this because she’s been seated against her bed’s headboard for almost two hours now, her laptop open on her lap, glaring at the clock in the corner of the screen. She feels wide awake, the kind of awake she feels when she bypasses all levels of exhaustion to end up in the weird stasis of hyper-wired. 

She hasn’t slept for more than a few hours in almost two days, but she doesn’t feel the need to, wanting nothing more than to go out and _do_ something. 

She ends up at the bar.

Forty minutes and three drinks into the night, there is a pretty woman pressing her against the brick wall just outside of the alien bar, and Alex can’t stop the way heat travels down to her core as the woman’s lips brush against her ear. 

“Want to get out of here?” 

And there it is again, the animalistic-like desire to just let go, to throw herself into sex as if it’ll solve all her problems. But she can’t help herself as she lets her lips trail over the woman’s collarbone, her fingers sliding down. 

“My place or yours?” she finds herself asking without hesitation, pulling back slightly to hear the woman’s answer. God, she doesn’t even know her _name_ , but this rush of adrenaline feels so good that she can’t find it in herself to care, her brain chanting _yes, yes, yes!_ now that she’s finally found a way to relieve all this pent up energy. 

“Whoever has a sturdier bed,” the woman purrs back, and Alex has her answer, fingers gripping the woman’s wrist as she pulls her towards her bike. 

Later, both sweaty and satiated, the woman laughs as she pulls her underwear back on. “God, you could go all night, can’t you?” she teases, making a point to look towards the clock on the wall. 

Alex sits up in bed. “Is that a proposition for another round?” she asks, because, yes, she probably could go all night, if she really wanted to. But the woman shakes her head. 

“Unfortunately, no. I have work early this morning, I’ve gotta get back.” 

Alex’s head falls back against the pillows. She doesn’t even watch the woman leave, just heard the door shut on her way out, before she takes a glance at the clock herself. 

Almost eight o’clock. She should be exhausted, should have to call in sick for the morning just to acquire those few precious hours of sleep in order to function like a normal human being. 

Vaguely, she’s aware of the pill bottle that continues to burn a hole in her nightstand drawer. She should take them, and then go to sleep.

She goes for a jog before work instead. 


End file.
